ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA

ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA, Archbishop of Alexandria, St. (c. 296–373). Educated in the Alexandrian catechetical school, he attended the First Ecumenical Council (q.v.) in Nicaea as a deacon. This hierarch (328–373) of Alexandria won a lifelong theological battle against Arianism (q.v.), the struggle for the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and for a Christology (qq.v.) which emphasized as its central thesis the statement: “God became man that we may be made divine” (On the Incarnation, 54). Orthodoxy holds that he was saying nothing fundamentally new, but rather defending the essential meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Clinging to this truth and seeing it through to its triumph, however, required all the force and endurance of an exceptionally powerful personality. Exiled by emperors hostile to his theology no less than five times (in 335, 339, 356, 362, and 365), often for years at a time, Athanasius found allies in the monks of the Egyptian desert (e.g., Pachomius [q.v.], Serapion, and Antony [q.v.]) and in the courts of the popes of Rome. Ultimately he would recognize in the great Cappadocian Church Father, Basil of Caesarea (qq.v.), an ally and like-minded theologian, and it would be Basil (also posthumously) and the other Cappadocians’ task to crown his triumph at the Second Ecumenical Council (381). In spite of many difficult circumstances Athanasius produced an impressive body of written works, in particular his theological treatises On the Incarnation and Against the Arians (in three books), his pastoral letters-especially a paschal encyclical that is the first historical document to list our present canon of the New Testament-and, traditionally, the enormously influential Life of Antony. If the latter was not by him, as some argue today, it in any case reflects his own deepest concerns in its picture of a deified human being, i.e., one in whom the grace (q.v.) and power of Christ are fully present.